Case study: Digital product passports & traceability — a city or utility pilot and the results so far

In January 2023, the City of Amsterdam launched the Amsterdam Circular Digital Product Passport Pilot, a 24-month initiative to test whether machine-readable digital product passports (DPPs) could meaningfully improve material recovery, extend product lifespans, and satisfy incoming EU regulatory requirements across the construction and electronics sectors. By December 2024, the pilot had tracked over 38,000 products, increased verified material recovery rates by 22 percentage points in participating demolition projects, and generated a replicable data architecture now being adopted by four additional European cities. The results provide one of the most detailed public records of municipal DPP implementation, revealing both the transformative potential and the stubborn practical barriers that cities will face as the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) mandates digital product passports across product categories beginning in 2027.

Why It Matters

The European Commission's ESPR, adopted in 2024, requires digital product passports for batteries (effective 2027), textiles (2028), and construction products (2029), with additional categories to follow. These passports must contain standardized data on material composition, recyclability, carbon footprint, and supply chain provenance, accessible via QR codes or RFID tags throughout a product's lifecycle. The regulation affects an estimated 30 million businesses operating within the EU single market, yet as of early 2026, fewer than 5% of manufacturers have implemented pilot-stage DPP systems.

Cities and municipalities sit at a critical juncture in the product lifecycle. They manage construction permitting, waste collection, demolition oversight, and public procurement, all touchpoints where product data can either flow seamlessly or disappear entirely. The Amsterdam pilot tested whether municipal governments could serve as both data stewards and enforcement nodes in the DPP ecosystem, bridging the gap between manufacturer data creation and end-of-life material recovery.

The financial stakes are considerable. The European Commission estimates that improved product traceability and material recovery could unlock EUR 1.8 trillion in circular economy value by 2030. At the city level, Amsterdam's waste management authority (AEB Amsterdam) processes approximately 1.4 million tonnes of waste annually, with construction and demolition waste comprising 35% of the total. Even modest improvements in material identification and sorting at demolition sites translate to millions of euros in recovered material value and avoided landfill costs.

Background and Pilot Design

Amsterdam's circular ambitions predate the ESPR. The city published its first Circular Economy Strategy in 2020, setting a target of halving virgin raw material use by 2030 and achieving full circularity by 2050. By 2022, the city's Circular Innovation Program had identified a critical bottleneck: demolition contractors and waste processors lacked reliable data on the materials embedded in buildings and consumer products, leading to conservative (and wasteful) disposal decisions. Concrete that could have been recycled as aggregate was sent to landfill because contractors could not confirm it was free of hazardous additives. Steel beams suitable for reuse were downcycled because their load-bearing specifications were unavailable.

The pilot was structured around three parallel workstreams. The first focused on construction products in six municipal building renovation projects, requiring contractors to create or access DPPs for structural steel, insulation, facade systems, and interior finishes. The second tracked consumer electronics (laptops, monitors, and servers) procured by the city government, attaching DPPs that would follow devices from procurement through internal redeployment to eventual recycling. The third developed the shared data infrastructure, a federated data platform built on the International Data Spaces (IDS) architecture with GS1 Digital Link standards for product identification.

The city partnered with Madaster, a Dutch materials passport platform already active in the construction sector, as the primary technology provider. Additional technology partners included Circular IQ for supply chain data aggregation, Nedap for RFID-based product identification, and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) for data governance and interoperability standards development. Total pilot investment was EUR 4.2 million, funded through a combination of Amsterdam's innovation budget, the EU Horizon Europe program, and in-kind contributions from technology partners.

Implementation Challenges

The first and most persistent challenge was data availability. For new construction products, manufacturers were generally willing to provide material composition data, but the level of detail varied enormously. Some manufacturers could specify exact chemical compositions and recycled content percentages; others could offer only generic material categories. A 2024 audit of data completeness across the pilot found that only 42% of construction product DPPs met the minimum data quality thresholds defined by the pilot's governance framework.

Legacy products presented an even greater challenge. Buildings scheduled for renovation contained products installed 10 to 30 years ago, long before any digital record-keeping was standard. The pilot team developed a "retrofit passport" methodology using a combination of on-site material scanning (X-ray fluorescence for metals, near-infrared spectroscopy for polymers), building permit archives, and manufacturer databases to reconstruct product data. This process was labor-intensive, adding approximately EUR 8 to EUR 15 per square meter to pre-demolition assessment costs, but it proved essential for accurate material recovery planning.

Interoperability between existing systems created friction throughout the pilot. The construction sector in the Netherlands uses at least four different building information modeling (BIM) platforms, three materials databases, and multiple proprietary waste tracking systems. Connecting these to the DPP platform required custom API integrations for each data source. The pilot team spent an estimated 35% of the total technology budget on integration work that would be unnecessary in a greenfield implementation. Standardization efforts led by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Committee 467 on DPP standards are expected to reduce these integration costs significantly, but the standards were still in draft form during the pilot period.

Data governance proved more complex than anticipated. Questions about data ownership, access rights, and liability consumed significant legal and policy resources. Who owns the material composition data for a building product: the manufacturer, the building owner, the city, or the demolition contractor? The pilot established a tiered access model where manufacturers controlled proprietary formulation details while basic material composition and recyclability data were publicly accessible. This compromise satisfied most stakeholders but required individual data-sharing agreements with each manufacturer, a process that scaled poorly.

Measured Outcomes

The construction workstream produced the most quantifiable results. Across six renovation projects encompassing approximately 45,000 square meters of building area, the availability of digital product passports increased verified material recovery rates from 58% (the Amsterdam baseline for comparable projects) to 80%. The improvement was driven primarily by better identification of reusable structural steel (diverted from downcycling to direct reuse in three cases), accurate classification of insulation materials (enabling proper recycling rather than landfill), and identification of facade components suitable for refurbishment.

The financial impact was meaningful but not transformative at the per-project level. Material recovery revenues increased by an average of EUR 12 per square meter compared to baseline projects, while pre-demolition assessment costs increased by EUR 11 per square meter. The net financial benefit was approximately EUR 1 per square meter, suggesting that DPPs are currently cost-neutral for construction, with the primary value being regulatory compliance preparation rather than immediate economic returns. However, industry analysts project that as secondary material markets mature and virgin material costs increase, the economic case will strengthen considerably.

The electronics workstream tracked 8,400 devices over 18 months. DPPs enabled the city's IT department to extend the average laptop deployment period from 3.8 to 4.6 years by matching device specifications to user requirements more precisely. When devices reached end of first life, detailed component-level data (battery health, screen condition, storage capacity) enabled more accurate grading for refurbishment. The percentage of devices sent to certified refurbishers rather than recyclers increased from 31% to 54%, and the average residual value recovered per device increased from EUR 38 to EUR 67.

The data platform processed over 2.1 million data transactions during the pilot, with an average query response time of 340 milliseconds and system uptime of 99.7%. The federated architecture proved capable of handling the transaction volumes, but the team noted that scaling to city-wide implementation (covering all construction and procurement activity) would require approximately 50 times the current capacity.

What Other Cities Can Learn

The Amsterdam pilot's most transferable lesson is that data infrastructure investment must precede regulatory mandates. Cities that wait for the ESPR implementation deadlines to begin building DPP capabilities will face compressed timelines and higher costs. The pilot team estimated that starting 24 months before a compliance deadline reduces total implementation costs by 30 to 40% compared to a 12-month rush implementation, primarily due to the time required for data quality improvement, stakeholder engagement, and system integration.

Flanders provides a useful comparison. The Flemish waste authority OVAM launched a parallel DPP initiative in 2023 focused exclusively on construction materials in public infrastructure projects. Their approach prioritized integration with the existing Flemish materials database (Tracimat) rather than building new infrastructure, reducing technology costs by approximately 45% compared to Amsterdam's approach. However, OVAM's system covers a narrower product scope and lacks the multi-sector flexibility of Amsterdam's federated platform.

Helsinki's experience offers another reference point. The City of Helsinki integrated DPP requirements into its 2024 municipal procurement framework, requiring all suppliers of furniture, IT equipment, and building materials to provide machine-readable product passports conforming to the ETIM classification standard. Helsinki's approach was regulation-forward but technology-light: rather than building centralized infrastructure, the city specified data format requirements and let suppliers choose their own DPP platforms. This reduced municipal technology investment but created data consistency challenges that required manual reconciliation for approximately 15% of product records.

The pilot also demonstrated that municipal governments should focus initial DPP implementation on product categories where they exercise direct control. Public procurement (where the city is the buyer and can mandate data requirements) and construction permitting (where the city can require DPP creation as a condition of permit approval) offer the strongest leverage points. Attempting to impose DPP requirements on private-sector transactions without regulatory backing proved ineffective during the pilot's stakeholder engagement phase.

Key Metrics Summary

Metric	Baseline	Pilot Result	Change
Material recovery rate (construction)	58%	80%	+22 pp
Products tracked	0	38,000+	N/A
Laptop deployment period	3.8 years	4.6 years	+21%
Device refurbishment rate	31%	54%	+23 pp
Residual device value recovered	EUR 38	EUR 67	+76%
DPP data completeness (construction)	N/A	42%	N/A
Pre-demolition assessment cost increase	N/A	EUR 11/sqm	N/A
Material recovery revenue increase	N/A	EUR 12/sqm	N/A

Action Checklist

• Audit existing municipal data systems (BIM platforms, waste tracking, procurement databases) for DPP integration readiness
• Identify 2-3 product categories where municipal authority enables direct DPP mandate (procurement, construction permitting)
• Engage with national standards bodies and CEN TC 467 to align local implementations with emerging EU DPP standards
• Establish data governance frameworks addressing ownership, access tiers, and liability before technology procurement
• Budget EUR 8-15 per square meter for retrofit passport creation on legacy buildings
• Partner with existing materials passport platforms rather than building custom solutions where possible
• Plan for 24-month implementation timelines including 6 months of data quality remediation
• Develop training programs for demolition contractors and waste processors on DPP data access and interpretation

FAQ

Q: What is the minimum viable DPP for construction products? A: Based on the Amsterdam pilot's experience, a minimum viable DPP should include: material composition by weight percentage, presence of substances of very high concern (SVHCs), designed service life, disassembly instructions or difficulty rating, and recycled content percentage. This baseline data set covers the core requirements of the draft EU DPP standards while remaining achievable for most manufacturers. Adding carbon footprint data, supply chain provenance, and detailed recyclability assessments increases value but also increases data collection costs by 40 to 60%.

Q: How much does DPP implementation cost per product? A: Costs vary dramatically by product category and data availability. For new construction products where manufacturers already maintain digital records, the marginal cost of DPP creation is EUR 0.50 to EUR 2.00 per product unit. For legacy products requiring physical assessment, costs range from EUR 5 to EUR 25 per item depending on complexity. Electronics DPPs, which can largely be auto-populated from existing asset management systems, cost EUR 0.80 to EUR 1.50 per device. Platform and infrastructure costs are separate and scale with transaction volume.

Q: Can smaller cities replicate this approach? A: Yes, but with adjusted scope. The Amsterdam pilot's federated architecture was designed for a city of 900,000 residents with a substantial innovation budget. Cities under 200,000 residents should consider joining regional DPP consortia (several are forming across European metropolitan areas), adopting existing platforms like Madaster rather than building custom solutions, and focusing on a single product category (construction is the most impactful) rather than attempting multi-sector pilots.

Sources

• City of Amsterdam. (2025). Amsterdam Circular Digital Product Passport Pilot: Final Evaluation Report. Amsterdam: Bureau Circulair.
• European Commission. (2024). Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR): Implementation Guidelines for Digital Product Passports. Brussels: DG GROW.
• Madaster. (2025). Materials Passport Platform: Technical Architecture and Performance Data 2023-2024. Utrecht: Madaster Services B.V.
• Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). (2024). Data Governance Frameworks for Digital Product Passports: Lessons from Dutch Municipal Pilots. The Hague: TNO.
• OVAM Flanders. (2025). Tracimat Integration with Digital Product Passports: Progress Report. Mechelen: OVAM.
• European Committee for Standardization. (2025). CEN/TC 467 Digital Product Passports: Draft Standards Overview. Brussels: CEN-CENELEC.
• City of Helsinki. (2025). Sustainable Procurement and Digital Product Passports: Year One Results. Helsinki: Helsinki Procurement Services.
• GS1. (2024). Digital Link Standard for Product Identification in Circular Economy Applications. Brussels: GS1 AISBL.